Little Monsters
by Saber Apricot
Summary: John Winchester investigates a rash of violent teen suicides in the small town of Oakville. During his time there, the string of unexplainable suicides isn't the only strange thing he encounters. This takes place before the first season.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes:** The events in this story take place before most of the first season of Supernatural. There is no Oakville, Indiana; I purposely made a fictional town. This fic takes place prior to the first season and involves John Winchester and pretty much any other character—major or minor—that pops up is an OC. Sam and Dean don't make an appearance. Sorry.

**Rating:** This fic is rated M for some violence, adult themes, and harsh language. I wanted to be on the safe side.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Supernatural or any canon characters from the series. Anything that's not from the series isn't from the series.

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**Little Monsters: Chapter 1**

Oakville, Indiana

A wiry teenage boy moved around his messy bedroom on the second story of a decently sized home. He was around the age of seventeen and dressed in a white shirt, red plaid boxers, and white socks. His room was a mess; clothes were strewn everywhere—a couple lying over his desk chair, a pair of blue boxers over his lamp, and most on the floor. The computer station that was directly across from the foot of his bed had a few untidy piles of papers and CDs. Green Day's _Basket Case_ blared from the small speakers that were connected to his computer.

As he bobbed his head and hummed along to the music, the teen picked up a black shirt from the floor and sniffed it. Then he gripped the white undershirt he was wearing and sniffed at well, as if to gage how dirty either one was. He paused for a moment before dropping the black shirt, allowing it to fall back on the floor where other clothing haphazardly laid.

Glancing around at the walls of his room, he grinned in appreciation at the posters of swimsuit models and various movie advertisements. Sexy, half-naked women and reminders of some of his favorite films always brought a smile to his face.

Moving to stop in front the computer, he lazily glanced at the screen as he ran a hand through his short, spiked, black hair. His smile broadened upon seeing all of the small instant messaging windows. He quickly sent a couple short replies. Then, he spun directly around and did a belly flop onto the bed. Reaching for the black cell phone on the mattress beside him, he checked for any messages. As he was playing with his phone, the notification sound of one or more people sending him instant messages caught his attention. After putting the phone the phone down, he sprung back off the bed to the computer and read the screen.

He read one of the messages out loud. "How about next bowling night?"

"Oh, hell's yeah I'll be there." He grinned as he typed back.

He sent a couple more messages before giving a goofy salute to his computer and shutting it off. The teen glanced at his alarm clock that read 11:45pm and sighed. He walked over to the light switch by the door and flipped the room lights off before returning to his bed. He moved his cell phone to the nightstand with the alarm clock and grabbed the TV remote in turn. After situating himself in bed, he used the remote to turn on the small, flat screen television set in his room. He idly flipped through some channels before stopping on the movie, _The Three Amigos_. He snorted lightly at the characters' antics as they were singing in the Mexican bar and grinned, shaking his head. About an hour later, he shut off the television and headed to bed.

The time on his alarm clock was 1:34am when his television seemed to turn back on by itself. A couple minutes later, the boy rose from his bed, not bothering to look at the TV or turn on the lamp. His head drooped as he hunched over. He stood and swayed on his feet, making him appear even willowier than he was. The boy mumbled, as if he was still asleep. Then turning, he started to take slow and heavy steps toward the window. While walking his head remained bowed and his arms limp on each side. He paused in front of the window, maybe six or so feet away. The teen waited for a couple seconds before bouncing on the balls of his feet, taking a step back. He then did a running leap at the window, as his arms remained down and to the sides, head-diving straight through the plane of glass.

The clack of his skull slamming against the window and the sound of shattering glass drowned out the television. Josh shouted in pain as he fell headfirst onto the damp grass, hitting the ground with a large thud and snap.

Moments later a neighbor ran out onto the lawn, pausing a couple feet away from the sight he saw. He was an older man in a white night shirt and boxers.

A woman in a pink bathrobe ran up to stand behind him and covered her mouth in shock. "Oh my God, Josh!" she choked out in a hysterical and high voice. As she shook her head, her blond, disheveled hair flew wildly. She moved to touch the shoulder of the man in front of her. "Andy!" she shrilled in a panicked voice.

"Nancy," the Andy quickly snapped, "Call 911! Hurry!" He rushed to the side of the injured boy, Josh. He brought up a hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes before taking a closer look at the injured boy.

The neighbor, Andy, looked up to Josh's now broken bedroom window. Upon seeing the traces of blood on the remaining shards of glass, he grimaced. What the hell was this boy thinking, he wondered to himself. He looked down at the bloodied teen who was barely breathing.

Josh was lying still on the grass on his stomach with his head turned to his left side. He couldn't move as blood from the deeps cuts on his head and face flowed out, some falling into his wide eye. His mouth was open but he couldn't scream. The pain was unbelievable.

Kneeling at his side, Andy tried to feel for a pulse on Josh's neck. "Josh? Josh! Son, can you hear me? It's Andy Marshall! Just hang in there, Nancy's calling for help." He moved as if to turn the kid over, but stopped himself. As much as he wanted to, he knew that moving him could cause even more trauma.

The injured teen couldn't speak, but a gurgling nose came from his throat. Josh twitched for a moment before he went still, dying with his eyes open.

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**More Notes:** Geez, there it is. Kind of a rough start, but it should improve over time. It's short for a first chapter, but I consider this more like a prologue. I'm going to try to keep most chapters longer than this one. Please read and review. Thank you for your time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes:** Well, here's the second chapter. It's a little longer than the first. Please read and review. Thank you for your time.

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**Little Monsters: Chapter 2**

Oakville, Indiana: Nine Days Later...

"And honestly, Detective Green, like I told the other officers, I didn't think that Josh was depressed. At least, not enough to do something like that." Elaine Harvey's voice wavered slightly, but there were no tears.

Elaine Harvey was thirty-seven years old; however, she looked to be in her late twenties. She was slim, pale, with long black hair. Despite that, she still looked tired, drained by the ordeal that happened barely a week earlier.

The first time she had to answer questions about her son, Josh, was right after the accident and then a follow up a few days following. She couldn't keep herself together for the first week; however, she had been crying so much and now the tears just could not come so easily.

Elaine looked to the solitary detective that had been interviewing her for almost an hour and gave a strained smile. "Again, I'm sorry that my husband couldn't come, but he's been working extra hours lately, even. He-he had to take off some time right after Josh, right after it happened. He has to catch up on his paperwork," she said in a small voice. She brought a hand up to smooth away the imaginary tangles in her perfectly manicured, black hair. "And, and work is good for him, you know. He needs to stay busy, so he won't think about..."she trailed off, knowing that the sentence didn't need to be completed.

The man sitting across from her in the living room wore a charcoal suite with a navy blue tie. He had dark brown hair with some graying in his hair and beard stubble. The detective looked to be a man in his mid-forties and his tired eyes gave the impression that he had been working hard for many years.

It was true that he had been working a difficult job for the past twenty years, but it was not as a homicide detective. John Winchester wasn't an officer, but a hunter of the supernatural.

He gave a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry, I know this must be hard on you—to have to go through these questions again—but it's my job to ascertain any possible new or excluded information that may help prove whether or not all or any of the deaths were accidental, suicides or-"

"Or what, Detective?" Elaine swallowed hard and frowned, before looking back down at her hands in her lap.

John sighed and tried to look Elaine in the eye, despite the fact that hers were evading his gaze. "Well, Josh, how did he get along with other students at school? Did he ever get into any fights? Was he being bullied?"

"You think someone could've driven him to..."

"I don't know; that's why I'm here, asking you, Mrs. Harvey." He looked at her an added apologetically, "I have to be thorough; I'm not trying to waste your time."

"That's right, you're from out of state," she murmured. "Having to come back for additional questions would be unfortunate." Elaine gave a tight smile before it fell and her brow creased. She looked at him, sizing the man up. "Strange though, being from out of state…"

"Well, Mrs. Harvey," he cut in, "As I've said, I'm merely here as a follow up, to make sure that all possibilities of foul play, or connections between any of the students and accidents, have been investigated properly." The words fell from his mouth so smoothly; like this was something he dealt with all of the time. "Just routine procedure. My boss likes us to be as thorough as we can."

"Because of Tiffany Williams," she stated. "I heard she drowned in the tub."

John's eyes widened in surprise before he gave a tight smile. "Word travels fast in small towns."

"So it's true then? She drowned herself in the bathtub?" Elaine seemed to have trouble believing that someone could accidentally drown in a bathtub, but, to her, drowning oneself didn't seem to make much more sense either.

He nodded his head. "As of now, all evidence points to suicide."

Her jaw tightened and she shook her head a little.

"What is it?" He leaned forward, looking at the woman with a hopeful expression.

"It's just hard to believe, that girl is," she faltered, then corrected herself, "_was_ a gifted student. She was in the newspaper a couple of times for winning athletic events and I saw her from time to time when I did volunteer work at the school—she was part of the student council. Every time I saw her, she was always smiling; she looked so happy. I don't understand. I still feel the same way about my Josh. I keep wondering how he could up and do something like that to himself. I wish he would've talked to us or tried to talk to someone. It's horrible that people, no children, do this to themselves—that they get to a point where they even think of doing something like..."

John Winchester sat back and sighed. "I know, it's tragic and my heart goes out to you. It's hard for a parent to lose a child, no matter the cause."

After finishing up his interview with Josh Harvey's mother, John returned to the silver sedan rental he was currently using for the case and headed back to his room at a local motel. He sat at the small, wooden table in his room, thumbing through his notes. He grabbed and pinned two additional sheets of facts onto the wall space over the table. Frowning, the hunter looked over the collage of information on the wall that he had amassed.

Josh Harvey was the seventeen-year-old boy that had jumped clear through the closed glass window from his second story bedroom to his death just a month prior. According to the police records and autopsy report, the trajectory, the deep cuts on his head, and lack of significant defense wounds—little to no abrasions on his hands and forearms—indicated that the boy had voluntarily leapt, head first, through the glass to his death. There were no actual witnesses, but he had also interviewed the neighbors, Andy and Nancy Marshall. They were the ones that discovered Josh just after he had jumped. Neither was able to give him any useful information, both only offering the possibility that Josh had been high or intoxicated; however, the toxicology report from the autopsy had come up negative for any drugs or foreign chemicals.

In fact, all of the teens that had died in what appeared to be suicides the past month had no traces of any harmful or mind-altering toxins in their systems. None of them had ever been on antidepressants or treated for depression. So, if there was an ingested substance that had driven the boy and the other teens to their deaths, it hadn't been discovered.

John picked up a yellow notepad and a pen, and started to read over some of notes out loud: "First death: Joshua Roberts, age sixteen, grade ten at St. Joseph's. Time of death: 2am. Jumped off bridge. No water, the fall was fatal, died on impact. When found, only wearing boxer briefs. No evidence that he was forced out to bridge or pushed. Head-first impact." He sighed, nodding his head knowingly. "Negative tox screen. From out of state, Bakerville, Tennessee. Lived in boy dorm town housing. Was on football team."

"Death number two: Joanne Wheeler, age seventeen, grade eleven, same school. Death at 10:45pm, five days after Roberts. Not far from her house on main road. Threw herself into ongoing traffic, was hit by two cars. Was wearing her cheerleading uniform from game prior that evening. Was staying home alone, parents and sibling out of town night of accident."

He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. "Death three: Josh Harvey. Age seventeen, junior. Died 1:34am, nine days ago, eighteen days after the first death, thirteen days after second." He paused for a couple moments, staring hard at his notes. "Jumped through second story bedroom window. Wearing white t-shirt, boxers, socks. No actual witnesses. Negative tox."

"Death four," he said in a gruffer voice before coughing to correct it. "Tiffany Williams. Age seventeen, senior, same school. Estimate time of death, around 11pm. Drowned in bathtub in a dorm house for girls. Negative on tox, no defensive wounds, no wounds at all, no sign of a struggle. Died six days ago, twenty-three days after the first death, eighteen after second, and five after the third."

"All students died late at night or early in the morning. All deaths different, different locations. All seem like suicides. All wearing different clothing, or no clothing. Nothing on tox reports. No defensive wounds, no signs of struggle, no clear evidence that they were with someone when deaths took place. Different grades, different family backgrounds. No general history of mental disease or depression." John's eyebrows rose and he tilted his head. "All styles of suicide atypical in different ways. Possible possession or hex. All within the age range of sixteen to eighteen; all from same school—Saint Joseph's High School." _Does this really have something to do with the high school? _He wondered, considering that there was no history of multiple suicides by students that didn't seem all that troubled.

_There may still be a possibility, but drugs and chemicals seem very unlikely_, he thought to himself. The hunter rolled his stiff shoulders and tilted his neck to each side, stretching it. He leaned back in his chair, tossing the pen he had been holding onto the table. Having just completed his second full day on this case, he glanced at the twin-sized bed considering sleep. Since he had finished interviewing the local family members and some of the neighbors, tomorrow he would go to the school and start questioning students. He groaned at the thought of dealing with all of the kids at the school. It wasn't the first time John had to question kids at a school for a case. Despite having past experience dealing with students, it was not much easier for the hunter. It would be a draining ordeal that would test his patience. There would be many questions, a lot of rambling, tangents, crying, childish gossip, and unreliable statements based on personal biases, guilt, and overactive imaginations. Most of the information would probably be useless, but he had to make sure it wasn't some demon or witch hiding in the school.

He thought back to the distraught parents he had recently interviewed and felt something all-too-familiar—a dull, gnawing, suffocating, and constricting ache. John couldn't bear the thought of losing either of his sons, Dean and Sam.

Dean, his older son, was currently on a case of his own. Last he heard it was going well. Although John worried for his boy's safety from time to time, he trusted that Dean could take care of himself. In John's eyes, Dean was strong, good, capable, responsible, and so much more. His oldest had started to take care of himself when he was still a little boy. At a young age, he was even looking out for his little brother, Sam.

Sam had given up on hunting and went off to college. Despite having a huge fight with his youngest, exchanging very angry and hateful words with one another, prior to Sam leaving for good, John still went to Stanford to check up on his boy from time-to-time. It was true that Sam and he had always butted heads, but John did not hate his youngest. No, Sam was always his son, no matter what. Additionally, even though he had abandoned hunting for a normal life, John was proud of Sam's success. He had been afraid that his son wouldn't be able to adjust, but Sam was a smart and driven type that was often stubborn enough to see his way through. Thanks to his diligence, his drive, he was on a full ride, scored excellent grades, and was aiming for law school. The boy even had a girlfriend. On his own, Sam was able to do so much. Although, he wasn't confident that Sam could remain safe, living away from the family and maintain the life of a civilian.

As much as he loved his sons, there were some things from them he had to keep secret. Things that he refused to involve his boys with, even though he trusted Dean so much and Sam seemed to be a piece of the puzzle. His hunt for the yellow-eyed demon that had killed his beloved wife was something he had to pursue alone. He didn't want his boys to know what he had and hadn't uncovered. _It's not like knowing would help anything. It would just hurt them and make things more dangerous._ Maybe even more importantly, his sons were his main weakness. This wasn't just a one-time case, but a long, ongoing battle for information on a very powerful and dangerous demon; a demon that seemed to have gone into hiding or switched up his game over the years. Still, even though many of the trails had gone cold, he did not want to risk their safety. John Winchester didn't know what he would do if he lost either one of his sons. _This family has lost too much already._ As far as he was concerned, it was his battle, not theirs. _Too dangerous_, he concluded.

John rubbed his face in a tired manner with his large, calloused hands. He turned his head, glancing at the bed and then to shower in the bathroom that had its door wide open, as if trying to decide what to do. "Tomorrow's gonna be a long day," he muttered as he stood and headed toward the bathroom.

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**Additional Notes:** So, that was chapter 2. If you haven't noticed, "Little Monsters" is in reference to that 1989 movie with the same title, starring Fred Savage and Howie Mandel. I've always liked monster movies and I used to love this cheesy film as a kid. The title is referring to how all of these strange things are going down in the middle of the night, while parents are asleep or away.


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